2 builders who never spoke to each other

Put an opt-in wherever someone finishes reading

A first time visitor arriving from an ad or a link knows nothing about you, so asking them to buy is the online equivalent of pitching a stranger you met thirty seconds ago. Capture the address instead, at every point where somebody finishes consuming something: the top of the blog, the end of each post, the home page which is almost always the most visited and least optimised, and an exit intent modal suppressed for a month afterwards.

The method

1. 01

   Put an opt-in at every point where someone finishes consuming something of yours: the floating widget, the book purchase, the squeeze page, the videos.

2. 02

   Put a plain, obvious subscribe form at the top of the blog and of every post

3. 03

   Put a prominent opt-in on the home page, which is almost always your most-visited and least-optimised page

4. 04

   Use a signup modal but trigger it on exit intent only, suppress it for at least thirty days after it shows, and turn it off on mobile

5. 05

   Consider a welcome gate: first-time visitors get a page built only to collect the email address, returning visitors get the normal home page

What it returned

• 90%

  True of 90% of the sites he has looked at

• Zapier reported a marked jump in subscribers per day after adding one; Baremetrics runs the same thing

• He notes the pattern of bloggers who refuse pop-ups, test them, and keep them because they convert

• Used on Mixergy by Andrew Warner

Sources

• My First Year Teaching: How I Built My Audience - Double Your FreelancingBrennan Dunn · doubleyourfreelancing.com · Make It Easy To Enter Your Ecosystem · 2013-08-15
• The Best Marketing Method I KnowNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · 2013-02-01
• 9 email marketing wins that take less than an hourNathan Barry · nathanbarry.com · 9. Add an opt-in form at the top of your blog page · 2015-04-08